You'd love German – there is absolutely zero system or logic behind what word has which of the three genders.

I only studied french for a short time, but I feel like that really doesn't work for french:

• chemisier, blouse, is masculine
• ceinture, belt, is feminine

Those were the two onces I could remember like this half a year after ending my french studies, but could be that those are only two uncommon counterexamples.

Also, both of these are what you would "expect" in German (die Bluse, der Gürtel)

You'll be right 50% of the times. Or 33% in german. And it doesn't match between languages. Like, "cat" is a she in german and a he in french. Often synonyms have different genders : une lettre/un courrier (both mean a mail).

I think the issue is that you are searching your mind for correlations between gender and sexism-related, which is often easier than searching for non-correlation. If I ask you "quick, think of a singer that wears leather", you'll find one instantly. But if I ask "quick, find a singer that doesn't wear leather" it takes a while, even though there more of them.

If you want a better impression of the phenomenon, open a dictionary, go over words one by one and count the points.

And also "organ" (the instrument) in french is male when singular and female when plural. "C'est un bel orgue" and "Ce sont de belles orgues".

That's what I love about my native Hungarian, even pronouns are ungendered.

Everything else is stupid complicated though. We have tonal harmony to worry about instead.

Dogs are male? In my language dogs are female. So I guess there is no standard for gendered language.

It's likely the same as English spelling. Just years and years of repeated exposure, and you eventually pick up most of it through osmosis

Oh hey, someone that used gender in regards to Spanish correctly.

I say that in regards to one of my Spanish teachers from high school who would always grade us wrong when we say male/female instead of masculine/feminine. One day he explained that by saying "Objects have gender! People have sex!"

I didn't know Swahili was that progressive.

In French, it's 'le pénis,' but nobody says that. 'Dick,' is feminine (la bite.)

Also, 'vagina' is masculine, but 'pussy' is feminine, because if you were to say 'le chat' it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes 'la chatte,' meaning pussy.

As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.

And don't even get me started on phrasal verbs... English is messy.

I think it’s to make it less ambiguous.

In English you just use the same word and figure it out from context. Someone else gave some other Spanish examples but I like “right” (direction) = “la derecha” vs “right” (human rights) = “los derechos”.

Of course there’s still so many variants of meaning that grammatical gender doesn’t help much.

Buuuut cars are a men thing aren't they? And yet it's la voiture...... Curious.......

You will be understood, it will just give people a small pause.

Sometimes it may cause confusion, like "the phone (he) went through the washing machine (she) and now <she/he> is broken" changes meaning if you get the pronoun wrong. But then if you are used to disambiguate thIs kind of situation - and you have to in english - it shouldn't happen too often

On the phone?

Tell me the Gender of Nutella or Yogurt, then :)